A Lady Ham And Her Oscilloscope: A Fairy Tale Of Sorts…
Bemoaning my lack of reasonable understanding of electricity, someone on a radio forum essentially told me “Suck it up, Buttercup! Buy a used analog oscilloscope and a copy of Michael Geier’s ‘How to Diagnose and Fix Everything Electronic’, and learn it!” Well, that seemed easy enough…
The book was an simple purchase. The o-scope, on the other hand, was a bit more of a challenge. I had never seen one in real life…how was I suppose to know how to purchase a 30+ year old piece of hopefully working lab equipment that I didn’t even know how to turn on? Regardless, I broadcasted my intentions on the local repeaters, with the hope that perhaps someone listening would have some insight for me.
Sure enough, an email came through one day from a local ham. He had seen a classified ad for a reasonably priced Tektronix 2465, a 4-channel analog oscilloscope with 300 MHz of bandwidth. Another area amateur was selling it, and I could arrange local pick up. I went for it!
I now have the oscilloscope as well as four probes. Tonight I worked out how to calibrate the probes. Above you can see a probe in channel 1 producing a square wave via the onboard calibrator. You’ll notice I clamped the ground line alligator clip to the shield of the BNC connector of channel 4. I did not have a ground lead that fit properly into the intended ground port of the calibrator.
Below you can see both channel 1 and 2 in use. Both probes are hooked on to the calibrator and grounded to channel 4. I fiddled with all the buttons. And actually got an idea for what many of them do.
Here were some circuits to trace. The one on the left is a blinky light made up of some transistors, resistors, and capacitors. And an LED of course. I could watch the DC voltage increase and decrease in the transistors as the light pulsed on and off.
Bottom line? I really am not sure what I am doing yet, but I am having fun learning!
KM1NDY
(Thanks Jerry & Paul for helping get this lovely machine into my hands! Very much appreciated!)